-
Thomas Kuhn Birth July 18, 1922
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a wealthy family.
Thomas's father, Samuel Louis Kuhn, was a Cincinnati-born industrial engineer and investment consultant. A graduate of Harvard and MIT, he had fought in World War 1. Tom’s mother, Minette Kuhn (née Strook), came from a wealthy New York family. A graduate of Vassar College, she wrote unpaid articles for progressive organizations, worked as a freelance editor, and was a patron of the arts. -
Thomas's Schooling
Thomas Kuhn at a young age between Kindergarten and fifth grade when to an elementary school in Manhattan where independent thinking was applied rather than a traditional way of learning through facts. Thomas did not excel in this and could not read but his father took him out of school and begin to teach him to read. 6th-9th grade Thomas went to a different school where he found his love of mathematics. Thomas then moved to a private school where then graduate to make his way to Harvard. -
Graduating Harvard
In 1940 Thomas Kuhn stepped in Cambridge on Harvard's pathway as an 18 year old man, he finally felt at home after moving so many school when he was younger. He went to Harvard for Physics, and at first he did not do so great, actually got a C on his first exam. As he was mentored Thomas took it and ran with it to where he would grasp Physics. As World War 2 started Thomas decided that he wanted to speed things up and graduate early, and he did in 1943. -
The Copernican Revolution
As Kuhn taught undergraduate courses at Harvard that were written from Aristotle's work, he became more perplexed on Aristotle's work when Kuhn would apply his knowledge before. Kuhn then decided to turn to concentrate on the History of Science and led to his first book, The Copernican Revolution. Kuhn believed the Copernicus’s model was ultimately preferred because it was more pleasing to its audience – in other words for aesthetic reasons rather than scientific reasons. -
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
In 1962 Thomas Kuhn publishes his book The Structure of Scientific Revolution. In his book his speaks of the paradigm shift which is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. After a paradigm shift has taken place, Kuhn said, scientists can begin building up facts again, studying different problems and searching for facts in different places suggested by a new paradigm. He described this period as normal science or puzzle solving. -
Thomas Kuhn Later years and death June 17, 1996
In the later years of his life Thomas Kuhn was an isolated man working in an all male setting, and his mother was worried. This brought Kuhn to see a psychiatrist but Kuhn hated them because they would fall asleep. 1948 Kuhn Married to Kathryn Muhs, had two daughters and one son. Unfortunately they later divorced in 1978 but Kuhn later remarried Jehane Burns in 1981. Kuhn retired from MIT in 1991 at age 69. Kuhn then dies of cancer at age 73 in Cambridge Massachusetts. -
Youtube & references
Youtube: https://www.google.com/search?q=THomas+Kuhn&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3vdm5j_38AhVMEFkFHe04BusQ_AUoA3oECAEQBQ&biw=1280&bih=544&dpr=1.5#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:ae848acb,vid:L70T4pQv7P8 Reference:
Bird, Alexander, "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/thomas-kuhn/. James A. Marcum https://iep.utm.edu/kuhn-ts/
